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Star Wars: Rogue One K-2SO Backstory Video

The first Star Wars anthology film, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, is already off to a great start, following the movie’s world premiere where critics called it amazing and action-packed with a bunch of surprises. Many are even saying that the spinoff is just as good as the original trilogy and better than last year’s fan-favorite The Force Awakens. Two characters, in particular, are getting much of the praise: female lead Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones) and new droid K-2SO (played by Alan Tudyk).

Rogue One is set shortly before the events of 1977’s A New Hope and centers on the group of Rebel spies who stole the design schematics for superweapon the Death Star. No one knows yet what exactly happened to those individuals, but in the end they’re responsible for the Rebel Alliance, led by Princess Leia, being able to defeat the Galactic Empire. Beyond that, however, it’s probably safe to say that Rogue One, which is being thought of as a war film, probably doesn’t end well for a majority of the characters. Their journey will be long and tough, so the film will need every bit of levity from standout K-2SO.

A new featurette video (above) released by Disney and Lucasfilm introduces droid K-2SO, who Tudyk is calling the anti-C-3PO. He was built by the Empire, then reprogrammed by Cassian Andor (Diego Luna), a Rebel intelligence officer, to become his right-hand man. Unlike, C-3PO’s obsession with etiquette and protocol, K-2SO has an honest and sarcastic streak that could get him into trouble. For the motion capture role, Tudyk still got to be right in the middle of the action, running around on stilts to accentuate the character’s height while wearing a motion-capture suit to bring the character to life. K-2SO also has the ability to blend in perfectly at Imperial installations and outposts, since there are other droids out there who look like him.

A second Star Wars featurette above focuses on Scarif, one of the key planets from Rogue One. Tatooine, the home of Anakin Skywalker and Luke Skywalker, was a desert planet, and Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back was the location of a base for the Rebel Alliance. Scarif though is a beautiful paradise planet where the final war scenes of the film will go down. To shoot the movie’s potentially deadly climax, the cast and crew set up shop Laamu Atoll in the Maldives. The location brought a certain otherworldly authenticity to Scarif because it’s not likely many, if any, movies had been shot there before.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story promises to be a Star Wars movie unlike any we’ve seen. With completely new characters and events that fills in the blanks, it tells a story you didn’t know you wanted to see. It has action, comedy and very real consequences, even though we already know what comes next in the Star Wars universe.